Mycteria
Mycteria is a genus of large subtropical and tropical storks with representatives in the Americas, east Africa, and southern and southeastern Asia. Two species have "ibis" in their scientific or old common names, but they are not related to these birds, and merely resemble some bald-headed ibises.

Charles J. Sharp · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CiconiidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 20.45 Mya to 0 Mya.
20 occurrences of Mycteria on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
20 occurrences- Miocene39%
- Pliocene6%
- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene5%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
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The named rock units Mycteria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Mycteria and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Mycteria and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
609 taxa- Ardea alba5 sites
- Ardea herodias5 sites
- Podilymbus podiceps5 sites
- Aenocyon dirus3 sites
- Alligator mississippiensis3 sites
- Buteo3 sites
- Cathartes aura3 sites
- Ciconia maltha3 sites
- Didelphis virginiana3 sites
- Equus3 sites
- Grus americana3 sites
- Lepisosteus3 sites
- Mammut americanum3 sites
- Mammuthus columbi3 sites
- Siren lacertina3 sites
- Amphiuma means2 sites
- Anas2 sites
- Anas acuta2 sites
- Anas crecca carolinensis2 sites
- Anas platyrhynchos2 sites
- Anhinga2 sites
- Anhinga melanogaster2 sites
- Anser caerulescens2 sites
- Aramus guarauna2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Mycteria, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
16 references- The Lower Miocene Fauna of Al-Sarrar (Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia)3
- The fossil avifauna of the tar seeps Las Breas de San Felipe, Matanzas, Cuba2
- Fossil birds from the Late Miocene of Chad and Ethiopia and zooge- ographical implications2
- The Lapara Creek Fauna: Early Clarendonian of south Texas, USA1
- El registro paleontológico de las Aves del “Mesopo- tamiense” (Formación Ituzaingó; Mioceno tardío- Plioceno) de la provincia de Entre Ríos, Argentina1
- Early Pliocene Tetrapod Remains from Kanapoi, Lake Turkana Basin, Kenya1
- The Fossil Record of the Genus Mycteria (Ciconiidae) in North America1
- Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers at Ishango (eastern Zaire): the faunal evidence1
- A late Pleistocene (Wisconsinan) avifauna from West Palm Beach, Florida1
- The non-passerine Pleistocene avifauna of the Talara Tar Seeps, northwestern Peru1
- Avian fossils from three Pleistocene sites in central Mexico1
- A new Pliocene stork from Nebraska1
Each of the 20 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 4 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Mycteria
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Charles J. Sharp
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Mycteria was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Mycteria”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCiconiidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1758